NASA in the PacNW in 2013

To Bill's thread, we did have a FCY in our race group, no incidents, seemed they were just "doing something", brought the field back together and that did change some positions once the FCY was off, really don't like that during a race. There were some minor glitch's but ran very smooth entire weekend. Nice new wireless scales with corner weights and cross weight distribution were set up. It will be interesting to see if they can pull as many entries for ORP as they did for the Ridge, they should be able to do that for PIR (which is their next event). Drifting was fun to watch for a few sessions but after that it got old so would like to see if that can be modified to reduce the number of drifting sessions (new this time).

Bill

Do you work for NASA?

I have a NASA license as I had the intention of going to Utah. My plans to do so have been subverted as I had to make a "financial" decision and with Utah off the table, I no longer had any reason to run with NASA. I learned some things while getting up to speed with NASA:

CONS:

I don't like being left in the dark about who's showing up. I like the Motorsports Reg website where I can see who's registered for the upcoming event. I've decided to enter events I had not planned on because I saw certain people were registered and I wanted to race them. In fact I did that for ORP, I had not planned on double entering but when I saw the other H4 cars I added a second run group to my registration. As of now I can't see how that's possible with NASA. So with NASA, it's kind of a "blind" entry.

What I discovered with NASA is that it isn't wise to register early. With ICSCC I can register several events into the future and heck, I can even show up to the event and if I don't set a wheel on track for any of my sessions I can leave without being charge a dime! With NASA, if I cancel at any time I'm charged $50/per entry to do so. That's pretty lousy customer service if you ask me. I was double entered and it cost me $100 when I discovered I couldn't attend an event. At the last IRDC event, I canceled one of my entries at the track and wasn't charged anything do so.

The other part that I prefer about ICSCC is that I can do my annual tech and logbook at the track: for free. I don't have to take a day off of work to tote my car to some independent shop to get my annual and logbook at possibly a $100 charge.

And finally, with ICSCC, I'm not required to send in my HANS for "re certification" every couple years and spend the money to have a new tag stamped on it. The things we have to do when a sanctioning body sells their soul to the SFI.

Edit to Clarify HANS rule as I sounded a bit unfair: "Use of a head and neck restraint system or device, carrying an SFI 38.1 certification label, is mandatory for all
drivers. References and information can be found in “Appendix D,” section #29.0 of the CCR. Additionally,
HANS brand devices with FIA 8858-2002 or FIA 8858-2010 certification labels are acceptable in lieu of SFI 38.1
labels."
So your Non-HANS head and neck device still has to be SFI 38.1 compliant.


PROS:

NASA is national, which gives someone an opportunity to run a national event.

They have contingency program for tires that the racers themselves didn't have to establish with the vendors. This can result in operating cost reduction, example: Bill's Toyo bucks.

Currently, and this may change, but they currently charge $299-$349 for two races. Sat and Sunday with practice/qual/race on both days. That's a favorable schedule/price IMHO but I don't know how long before that changes.



With several of the race cars at the last NASA weekend being from Conference, I'll be interested to see how many race cars (non HPDE/TT/Drift) are at the NASA event at PIR which is the same weekend as our Spokane Triple.

Now that I'm back in California, I had my first race event with NASA SoCal this weekend.

One unique thing that they did was have a 20 minute qualifying RACE (as in W2W) on Sunday. Saturday was practice, qualify (the normal way), then race. Sunday was practice, qualifying RACE, and then the main race. It was kinda cool to have the short qualifying race and I liked the extra W2W time.

I know there has been a lot of discussion on this forum regarding maximizing bang-for-the-buck and I believe this would be one way for Conference to achieve that.

IMO, nearly all of Colin's pros and cons are down NASA being a national-level business. Costs for everything, charges for making them do administrative stuff, close ties with industry-specific businesses, and more flexibility in how they do things. And I'm sure they hope to change their price structure (upwards, of course) over time, and as Colin might've been alluding to, as I imagine right now their NW region is acting at a loss in order to get a toe-hold in the area.

Lots of interesting schedule things we (Conference) should look at, and maybe the odd other small thing here or there, but there are always going to be some fundamental differences between our member- and volunteer-driven club system and their business that I would caution against target-fixating on in "fear" that they might "beat" us on our home turf. While I wouldn't go so far as to say Conference "ain't broke, so don't fix it," I would say that Conference has been doing something right for a really long time.

Conference definitely has done something VERY right for a VERY long time Steve, and my loyalty is with them. Big business and big bucks NASA? No thanks.